anger, and you're very
unhappy, I can see. Turn to God for help, and in His mercy everything
will be made so different for you--so very different! Come!"

The girl said with a sort of surprising quietness: "I don't want the
baby!"

The remark staggered him, almost as if she had uttered a hideous oath.

"'Ilda was in munitions," said her mother in an explanatory voice:
"earnin' a matter of four pound a week. Oh! dear, it is a waste an'
all!" A queer, rather terrible little smile curled Pierson's lips.

"A judgment!" he said. "Good evening, Mrs. Mitchett. Good evening,
Hilda. If you want me when the time comes, send for me."

They stood up; he shook hands with them; and was suddenly aware that the
door was open, and Noel standing there. He had heard no sound; and how
long she had been there he could not tell. There was a singular fixity
in her face and attitude. She was staring at the girl, who, as she
passed, lifted her face, so that the dark eyes and the grey eyes met.
The door was shut, and Noel stood there alone with him.

"Aren't you early, my child?" said Pierson. "You came in very quietly."

"Yes; I heard."

A slight shock went through him at the tone of her voice; her face had
that possessed look which he always dreaded. "What did you hear?" he
said.

"I heard you say: 'A judgment!' You'll say the same to me, won't you?
Only, I do want my baby."

She was standing with her back to the door, over which a dark curtain
hung; her face looked young and small against its stuff, her eyes very
large. With one hand she plucked at her blouse, just over her heart.

Pierson stared at her, and gripped the back of the chair he had been
sitting in. A lifetime of repression served him in the half-realised
horror of that moment. He stammered out the single word--

"Nollie!"

"It's quite true," she said, turned round, and went out.

Pierson had a sort of vertigo; if he had moved, he must have fallen
down. Nollie! He slid round and sank into his chair, and by some
horrible cruel fiction of his nerves, he seemed to feel Noel on his
knee, as, when a little girl, she had been wont to sit, with her fair
hair fluffing against his cheek. He seemed to feel that hair tickling
his skin; it used to be the greatest comfort he had known since her
mother died. At that moment his pride shrivelled like a flower held to a
flame; all that abundant secret pride of a father who loves and admires,
who worships still a dead wife in the c